Re: [webfinger] [appsawg] #12: Semantic gap for the client side

["Paul E. Jones" <[e-mail]>]

Folks,

Sal noted that we have several DISCUSS points to cover.  He referred us to this page:
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/appsawg/trac/report/1

Let's take this first item.  I'll start with #12 here.
 
The idea with Host-Meta and, hence, WebFinger, is that a client that wants to know anything about a given URI, it takes the URI and issues a query as per RFC 6415 or per the WebFinger spec.  The intent was to allow any URI, though if one is looking for information about a user's account, the recommendation is to use the 'acct' URI, since it is intended to represent an account owned by a user, versus other URIs like mailto or http.

There may be multiple versions of the story that led us here, but the problem some were trying to address was the use of http URIs for OpenID.  It was hard for users to use.  Users are accustomed to user@domain form of addresses, but then there was the question of what URI to use for those.  The mailto URI could work, but it was not appropriate if one were querying for a user on Twitter, for example.  That and other reasons led to the creation of the 'acct' URI scheme.  And, so we recommend the use of that URI scheme in Section 4.5 of the draft.  However, a client most certainly could query for information about a user using any type of URI.  For example, this is valid:
$ curl https://packetizer.com/.well-known/webfinger?resource=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.packetizer.com

The expected result is JRD that describes the queried resource.  The most useful resource probably is the 'acct' URI today.  The acct URI would return a JRD that describes the account.

So, what is the semantic gap, exactly?  What text can we add to make this clearer without confining WF to being useful only for 'acct' URIs?

Paul

> -----Original Message-----
> From: appsawg issue tracker [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 3:21 AM
> To: [e-mail];
> [e-mail]
> Cc: [e-mail]
> Subject: [appsawg] #12: Semantic gap for the client side
> 
> #12: Semantic gap for the client side
> 
>  the document should clarify how  the client will be able to determine
> what
>  sort of URI to use is the resource part of the query or
>  what the semantics of any given URI are supposed to be.
> 
>  (This a Discuss, present in the IESG Evaluation Record)
> 
> --
> -------------------------------------+------------------------------------
> -
>  Reporter:                           |      Owner:  draft-ietf-appsawg-
>   [e-mail]      |  [e-mail]
>      Type:  defect                   |     Status:  new
>  Priority:  blocker                  |  Milestone:
> Component:  webfinger                |    Version:
>  Severity:  -                        |   Keywords:
> -------------------------------------+------------------------------------
> -
> 
> Ticket URL: <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/appsawg/trac/ticket/12>
> appsawg <http://tools.ietf.org/appsawg/>